Steve Kornacki, the political data guru and broadcaster best known for his election night coverage on MSNBC, is “cautiously optimistic” that this year's election will be scheduled much more quickly than 2020.

“It will happen faster, maybe even significantly faster,” Kornacki said on Pod Save America.

Kornacki cited the decline in mail-in voting and changes to vote-counting procedures starting in 2020 as ways to speed up the process. “Others who haven't even changed the procedures yet at least have more experience with it now,” he said.

The polls in the swing states were almost dead – neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump could escape the margin of error.

Although Kornacki is known for his marathon polling on election night, he says he takes a few hours out of the day to take a walk and clear his head while the early votes roll in.

“The more confident someone is in saying they see something in the polls or early voting, the more skeptical I become,” Kornacki said.

Although the polls were famously wrong in 2016 and again in 2020, Kornacki said he is also “cautiously optimistic” about the accuracy of the polls in this election.

“I always try to tell people that when the polls show Harris with a lead in Michigan and Trump winning by two, it's not really a polling error, but that the result is in line with expected results lies,” he said. Kornacki added that pollsters have changed their methodology to better reach Trump supporters, who have been undercounted in the last two elections.

Kornacki and Pod Save America host Dan Pfieffer also went into depth about which swing state counties to watch on election night and pointed out key demographics that Harris needs to keep — like black men in Georgia and North Carolina.

Kornacki said Harris also needs to hold on to big wins in the cities to claim the overall state win. “Milwaukee, again, is very similar to what we talked about with Detroit and Philadelphia,” Kornacki said. “You know Trump showed signs of progress there in 2020.” Kornacki added that if Harris is losing points with demographics that have long been Democratic strongholds — such as Latinos — she is losing points elsewhere with a different demographic must make up for.

Kornacki also addressed the results of the Congress, saying that the House's balance sheet would not be known for some time.

“It could be election month if we wait for them,” Kornacki said.

But he pointed to key races that could decide control of the Senate, such as incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown's race in Ohio.

“If Brown doesn’t hold out, the Democrats will have to pull a rabbit out of the hat somewhere. It will be clear whether there is a chance for that in Texas, I think it's pretty early,” he said.

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